A VERY OLD HABIT
Trent England
We needed a box for it. We talked about the need for a box. This went on for a day, and then it went on for a week. One of us was dying.
Someone said, “I think my father has the right box.” Everyone else nodded, and then we decided that whoever would go out and get the box would have to be someone who had the blood and the tissue to even step out and leave the basement and go and get the box, provided its dimensions were institutionally sound. It had to be the exact size if one of us was to leave the place and extract our mass and embark upon the journey to the father’s house and get the thing, the box, and bring it back, but it could not be the one of us who was dying.
The box arrived and became a font of displeasure. There was one of us who disputed its origin, who could distinguish between oak and mahogany and four-year-old formica. Then we had to dismantle its brass strappings and clasps and fractions of familial memory.
Then we needed the right size of scissors. Someone suggested a spreader, and then they mentioned a cutter. We think they might have said cutter first, though. Who was it, and why did they give us this explanation of the cutter and spreader? The local memory is gone, but it could not have been the one of us who was dying, because the expression and express definition were offered up the day the statewide news finally found us, cameras and all, crawling down the hill and trying to park on the slantly conceived gravel depository.
When the one of us who was dying, when he made it out, even with his arms intact, we didn’t recognize him. It was as if the offered strife had gotten to him, but we weren’t sure if it was the cutter first or the spreader first.
The box was left unregarded and uncanonized by national lore-mongers, and we finally cut it the right way. We needed a broom to sweep up the shavings and clippings and all the angry little pieces tossed to the floor.
Then it was like any another day had passed and left with us a scroll-sawed box, stained and underwhelmed, and we stood on copper-hinged kneecaps, wondering if we ever needed the box in the first place.
From our quarrelling four-walled factions we took a collective deep breath, now one person short.